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Wordly Obsessions

~ … the occasional ramblings of a book addict …

Wordly Obsessions

Tag Archives: short story

Ahh Penguin Modern Classics, How I Love Thee! | Celebrating 50 Years of Good Reads, With Good Reads…

07 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

literary fiction, Penguin Books, Penguin Modern Classics, short story, virginia woolf


Authors we love, and some we don’t: 50 of the best writers of modern fiction are showcased in this collection of 50 little books as Penguin Modern Classics celebrates it’s fiftieth birthday. Which one will you choose?

There it is folks, an entire library of modern literary fiction in one compact little box. How convenient! Having read ‘Hell Screen’ by Akutagawa and ‘The Lady in the Looking Glass’ by Virginia Woolf, I have fallen in love with Penguin’s concept of bringing us tidbits of the best of contemporary fiction. I’m a sucker for short stories.

I am currently taking up the challenge to read ALL of the books in the series which won’t take long provided I can find them all. The great thing about this collection is that they contain stories that not only showcase an authors differing styles (as was the case with Virginia Woolf) but they also bring to light some of the lesser-known, but equally as good works too.

If you want to take up the challenge too then you can find more information abotu the books at the Penguin Modern Classics website or you can purchase the entire set at Amazon or Waterstone’s.

For those interested, here’s a list of all the book’s in the series:

RYUNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA Hell Screen

KINGSLEY AMIS Dear Illusion

DONALD BARTHELME Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby

SAMUEL BECKETT The Expelled

SAUL BELLOW Him With His Foot in His Mouth

JORGE LUIS BORGES The Widow Ching – Pirate

PAUL BOWLES The Delicate Prey

ITALO CALVINO The Queen’s Necklace

ALBERT CAMUS The Adulterous Woman

TRUMAN CAPOTE Children on Their Birthdays

ANGELA CARTER Bluebeard

RAYMOND CHANDLER Killer in the Rain

EILEEN CHANG Red Rose, White Rose

G. K. CHESTERTON The Strange Crime of John Boulnois

JOSEPH CONRAD Youth

ROBERT COOVER Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady

ISAK DINESEN [KAREN BLIXEN] Babette’s Feast

MARGARET DRABBLE The Gifts of War

HANS FALLADA Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD Babylon Revisited

IAN FLEMING The Living Daylights

E. M. FORSTER The Machine Stops

SHIRLEY JACKSON The Tooth

HENRY JAMES The Beast in the Jungle

M. R. JAMES Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book

JAMES JOYCE Two Gallants

FRANZ KAFKA In the Penal Colony

RUDYARD KIPLING ‘They’

D. H. LAWRENCE Odour of Chrysanthemums

PRIMO LEVI The Magic Paint

H. P. LOVECRAFT The Colour Out of Space

MALCOLM LOWRY Lunar Caustic

KATHERINE MANSFIELD Bliss

CARSON MCCULLERS Wunderkind

ROBERT MUSIL Flypaper

VLADIMIR NABOKOV Terra Incognita

R. K. NARAYAN A Breath of Lucifer

FRANK O’CONNOR The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland

D OROTHY PARKER The Sexes

LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA Through the Wall

JEAN RHYS La Grosse Fifi

SAKI Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped

ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER The Last Demon

WILLIAM TREVOR The Mark-􀀍 Wife

JOHN UPDIKE Rich in Russia

H. G. WELLS The Door in the Wall

EUDORA WELTY Moon Lake

P. G. WODEHOUSE The Crime Wave at Blandings

VIRGINIA WOOLF The Lady in the Looking-Glass

STEFAN ZWEIG Chess

Related articles
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Book Review | ‘First Love, Last Rites’ by Ian McEwan

28 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in 50 Books A Year, Book Review

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

amsterdam, Atonement, book review, Fiction, first love last rites, ian mcewan, short story


First Love, Last RitesFirst Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Oh my. Ian McEwan, you are a sick @&%*! But bloody hell can you write…”

This was my first response to these lean, mean sickening stories of ennui, sexual perversity and emotional absence. McEwan manages to abridge the two opposing poles of sexuality and mortality in these scary little urban tales. Besides this over-arching theme McEwan seems to write each story from the perspective of the perpetrator rather than the victim – something I never actually got comfortable with considering all his protagonists are murderers, incestuous rapists, pimpish theatre directors and paedophiles.

What I suppose I liked about these stories was how McEwan took a day out of an ordinary person’s life, and showed us how quickly it could be degraded, how by degrees an average person could manage to commit an ‘accidental’ crime, sometimes through idle suggestion alone. There is a very precise psychology around these stories and I’m pretty sure anyone who has followed the news over the past 10 years can name at least ONE incident that bears an incredible resemblance to one of the fictions within this slim book.

The taboo subjects in this novel are the things that we tend to shudder and condemn within our circle of family and friends. These are things that we would never dare identify with because it’s outside ‘normal’ accepted social behaviour. The acts themselves are the type that once committed, puts one on a ‘road of no return’. They are acts of self-condemnation and moral ruin, and I sense it is McEwan’s intent to make us feel how close we really are to becoming such monsters. After all, no one is born a rapist or a murderer, and something has to happen to make them that way. And sometimes that something can be a subtle domestic happening that grows to sinister proportions until it finds an awful outlet.

The narrative itself is written in a deceptively straight-forward and often jolly manner which means we instantly fall into the habit of identifying with the narrator. And as readers that is what is expected of us. However, the trap is laid, and when things start getting nasty I personally found I couldn’t ‘disassociate’ myself with the protagonist as I wanted to, and ended up being given a pay-off of disgust and distress.

I have often found McEwan’s writing to be like a ‘small quake’, the events he writes about have a quiet devastation to them. They live long within you like a seismic echo. One of his most loved novels ‘Atonement‘ is a classic example of this which makes ‘First Love, Love Rites’ little miniature versions of such calamities.

The stories that stood out the most were ‘Solid Geometry’ and ‘Conversations With a Cupboard Man’. The former is a borderline gothic tale of spousal enmity and the occult of mathematics. The latter deals with the turbulent past of a retarded man, and looks at the horrific psychological damage done to people who do not receive proper social care.

Despite my glowing review I gave this book 3/5 stars because I have read better by McEwan and hope to discover more novels of the caliber of ‘Atonement’.

If you like Ian McEwan then please visit my review of ‘Amsterdam’.

View all my reviews

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  • Writers on Writing: Ian McEwan (didimicommunications.wordpress.com)
  • ‘Sweet Tooth’ by Ian McEwan: A Spy Novel With Love and Relationships, No Food Involved (booksnreview.com)
  • Ian McEwan’s Saturday: An Ill-Suited Vessel for the Contents of Its Time (rosslangager.com)
  • Good Book Number Four (goodbooksandmusic.wordpress.com)
  • The Lies We Tell: Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth (themillions.com)
  • Ian McEwan: By the Book (nytimes.com)

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Book Review | ‘2BR02B’ by Kurt Vonnegut

20 Saturday Aug 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review, Excerpts

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

2br02b, book review, Dan Wakefield, dystopian, kurt vonnegut, librivox, New York, science fiction, short story, Slaughterhouse-Five


2BR02B2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Your city thanks you; your country thanks you; your planet thanks you. But the deepest thanks of all is from future generations.”

In the not so distant future, immortality has become a reality. The proverbial fount of youth has been discovered (or rather ‘engineered’) by scientists. In a world where the average lifespan of a human is approx. 140 years, natural death is rare and far between (no terrible diseases, no aging). In fact, the only way people ever actually ‘die’, is through choice. In a world where youth is on tap, you’d think it would be a paradise, but not so. In a little over 16 pages, Vonnegut shows us the stark realities of over-population and what happens when mere mortals send the grim reaper on a semi-permanent sabbatical. Told from Vonneguts’ trademark humourous perspective, we are taken straight to a New York maternity clinic and shown the absurd consequences of playing god.

The dilemma we are presented with is that of an expectant father. As his wife is set to give birth to not one, but three babies, he begins to have very dark thoughts. In a society where life has become almost unlimited, the law regulates childbirth with an iron fist. Since ‘deaths’ are on a volunteer basis, birth-control has taken on a whole new dimension. The tragi-comedy here is whether our poor protagonist can find three people ‘willing’ to commit state-endorsed suicide so that his children can be born.

This extremely short story is well-written and best enjoyed either as an audio file or in e-book form. I found this gem through the librivox archives, and since listening to it have realised that it is available in many different formats. I really enjoyed this story, as it displays Vonnegut’s narrative strengths beautifully. The ending was particularly good, very punchy and to the point (as all v. short stories should be in my opinion).

This is short fiction at it’s best and no one should pass up the opportunity to experience it. The story only takes a few minutes to get through, but contains a powerful message that marries the present culture of youth-obsessed ‘body-beautiful’ with China’s own strict ‘birth-control’ regime. It seems the seeds of such a scenario already exist in world society, and that my friend, is scary stuff indeed.
View all my reviews

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  • Book review | Kurt Vonnegut’s letters leave a legacy of ‘depth, warmth and wit’ (kansascity.com)
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  • A Sensitive Meatball: On Kurt Vonnegut’s Letters (themillions.com)
  • Vonnegut on Creating Characters (ctwesting.com)
  • According to Kurt Vonnegut, You’re Allowed To Be In Love 3 Times in Life (theatlantic.com)
  • Kurt Vonnegut … (beartales.me)
  • Serial Vonnegut (themillions.com)

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Book Review | ‘Beginners’ by Raymond Carver

20 Friday May 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

book review, Haruki Murakami, love story, raymond carver, short story, south of the border west of the sun, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love


BeginnersBeginners by Raymond Carver

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I picked this up, I didn’t look at the author properly. I saw the ‘Raymond’ and briefly a ‘C-er’ and just grabbed it thinking it was a gritty detective novel by Chandler. I was disappointed when I got home; however my embarrassing misobservation turned into delight, as I discovered what I could probably call the perfect example of the short story.

Yes, Carver’s precision and execution of this understated and overlooked
writing form had me reeling with wonder and envy. Here was finally an author I could enjoy on a reader’s level yet also learn about from a writerly angle, which goes to show the literary value of this collection.

Originally published in 1981 as ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love‘, these short stories soon gained a lot of attention in America and around the world for their candid and gritty exploration of ‘real’ relationships. As the title suggests, the stories are about love in all its’ various guises and is as bold an attempt to capture what love really is, as opposed to what we expect it to look and feel like. Carver’s stories oscillate between extremes, as he looks at what happens to the chemistry between two people when things willingly or unwillingly go wrong.

In ‘Why Don’t You Dance?’ and ‘Viewfinder’ Carver examines the different ways people respond to a break-up. The former story stands out as the most powerful, as the protagonist completely guts the house of its contents and sets them up on the lawn outside exactly as they were when inside the house. This ‘gutting’ and remodeling stands as a metaphor for loss and underlines how spaces are sometimes saturated by relationships and become an extension of the lover lost.

In ‘Gazebo’, Carver paints the death-throes of what was once a stable relationship. The dialogue between the couple is key, as Carver times speech and prose perfectly to reproduce that unbearable ‘tug-of-war’ between two wills; the betrayed and the betrayer. The chemistry here is extremely volatile and is nicely offset by a side-story of the perfect married couple. This time a motel acts as the setting, showing the absence of ‘home’ and  how the negative energy of a space whose function isn’t to contain and nurture  a single relationship but is designed to be let out to strangers has a devastating effect on the couple.

Houses feature heavily in all Carver’s stories, no matter what aspect of love he is trying to capture. This gives his work a very sharp ‘domestic’ edge which when added with his eagle-eyed observations from real-life, makes his prose believable yet ascerbic and exceedingly uncomfortable. Having said that however, his stories aren’t all in this vein. In ‘A Small, Good Thing’ Carver approaches the tragedy of child loss with language that is throbs with anticipation and transparent fear. The story however ends on a gossamer-like thread of hope, showing Carver’s more merciful side, as the grieving parents find peace in the most unlikeliest of places.

What I ultimately loved about these stories was their honesty and how Carver did not sacrifice nor dilute his narratives for aesthetic or marketing purposes. These stories are also different because they come from a man’s perspective. Carver’s observations teach us that there is nothing separating either sex from the pain of betrayal, nor the act of betraying. Contrary to what we have been taught, there are no separate types or textures to the stuff of heart-break. We are all wonderfully and mutually the same; the only marked difference being perhaps how we deal with it as men and women.

Carver’s little medley of love stories are a rare treat, and for those who have enjoyed them I recommend Murakami’s ‘South of the Border, West of the Sun’. Again it follows along the same lines, except this is an even rarer thing; a confessional where the protagonist (a happily married thirty-something man)  begins a narrative documenting all the rights and wrongs he has done in the name of love.

This is a must-read for anyone interested in studying the art of the short story, or indeed any form of writing. Satisfaction guaranteed.

View all my reviews

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  • Story-geek: ‘Raymond is no longer with us – Carver is dead’ by Ognjen Spahic, vs. Little Things by Raymond Carver (lane7.wordpress.com)
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  • Happy endings: How the short story genre is taking over the Costa Awards (metro.co.uk)
  • Book Review: Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (integrated4.wordpress.com)

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Book Review | ‘The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

12 Thursday May 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review, Excerpts

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1001 book list, book review, charlotte perkins gilman, classics, edgar allan poe, feminist literature, short story, virginia woolf, Yellow Wallpaper


The Yellow Wall-paper and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)The Yellow Wall-paper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“A man’s honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it. “

Gilman’s prose is of the scary type. Scary for its’ intellect and practical advice for all women. First of all, she is an unapologetic feminist. These well-structured little stories could be divided into three themes which showcase Gilman’s adeptness in her art. The first third of the book displays distinct Gothic elements where houses (what Freud called the ‘Unheimliche’) become objects that reflect female repression. In ‘Yellow-Wallpaper‘, Gilman’s most famous and disturbing story, the house is portrayed as a domestic prison, a warden, and later as a mirror that depicts the awful break-down of the main character. In truth, I was not prepared for the subtle horror of the final scene due to Gilman’s clever use of language. There were also undertones to this story that paralleled partly with Virginia Woolf‘s own tragic death. Gilman’s inspiration came from personal experience after being admitted to a mental institution whereupon the regime was so bad that it almost made her lose her mind. In her preface, she states in particular how the story was written to all doctors who think total rest and complete detachment from any activity are sure cures for a curious, flexible mind.

“I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.
But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.
And though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn!

I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.”

The second set of stories are mostly humorous satire’s based on the style of different well-known authors such as Austen and R.L. Stevenson. While they were well-written these did not particularly interest me so much. The last part of the book however clearly hammered home the political and socio-economic potential of women in the world. The stories prove that Gilman was a woman very much ahead of her time. The stories themselves must have caused a real stir and they are worded in such a way to stamp out any kind of protest from the ‘male chauvinistic pigs’ that she is constantly pounding.

“Woman” in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether.”

While the stories were entertaining, I did tire of the overly feminist tone, and soon the plots all began to merge together. Allow me to explain: a woman at the dregs of her life (a mere 50 years old) suddenly gets the urge to live for herself for once. Her children are married off, the husband is conveniently dead, so there is nothing stopping her. The children are trying to get at her money (what little is left of it) by getting her to sell off the property and move in with them. The matriarch refuses and instead of explaining what she’ll do with her life, sets about renting off her property, setting up ‘ladies clubs’, starting up a jam-making business, whereupon in a year her income doubles and trebles. In two years she becomes a millionaire and laughs in the face of her children and everyone else who considered her a helpless good for nothing old lady. End of story.

As I said, while this is entertaining, it does get tedious. But all in all a must-read even if just for ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.

View all my reviews

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Writer’s Journal | Notes About a Small Island, The Novel as Seedling (1)

12 Thursday May 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Art, Authors, Quotes, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cyprus conflict, notes about a small island, novel, once upon a time in cyprus, poltical, short story, writers journal, writing


 … How the story fell upon my mind, and refused to leave…
… And grew into a thorny briar patch…
… Demanding to be told…

Years ago I had an idea for a novel. It struck me one day when I was doing something quite normal. Maybe I was washing the dishes, maybe I was taking a walk, but it was during one of those moments when your body is in autodrive and your mind elsewhere.

The story began with: ‘Why hasn’t anyone written about this before?’ At first, the question was small, a pin-prick in the brain. But later I realised it was in fact an old, dull ache born from an event of systematic racial intolerance that subsided and was later left to stew slowly in a stagnant mire of political and personal gain. It’s a well known fact that people get used to things they shouldn’t, things like pain, hunger and even death. Of course, this had nothing to do with those things, but harboured within it the traces of such suffering and was seeking justice to its burnt pride. It offered me its tangled skein of problems and asked me to listen to the voices therein.  

Writing a story is hard enough, but giving a story the justice it deserves 
requires phenomenal talent. All I had at my possession was an above average passion for books and an appreciation for the written word. So it was here I began my search, between dusty pages and forgotten tomes, for remnants of the question. I racked my brains, trying to come up with a book, a film, a play, anything that was a half-decent attempt to portray this neglected area of history. I was to my dismay, met by silence and denial.

Art had next to nothing in its vast repertory that was a study of the country, its people or their history. Any accounts were abridged version of events written predominantly by outsiders. I poured over military documents, political correspondence, ‘eyewitness’ accounts, but all were sterile, too neutered to be  a faithful representation of events. The question pulsed its’ red light, ‘Something is missing, something is wrong’. Yes, I could see it now. Something was missing. It was the absence of the hand-over-the-heart, the honesty, the coming-clean. It was the absence of the voices in the skein, those who could still recount the past on the rough-hewn syllables of their mother-tongue.   

This silence, this absence was denial and it issued from a particular political ilk that championed democracy and fairness, but was (as the indelible ink of history would have it) the very demon that fanned the embers of racism. 

For months I thought about this, and an anger welled up inside me. There were so many stories to tell, so many versions; the culmination of which would be the chorus to break this unreasonable silence. These stories weren’t in any 
historical books or anthologies, instead they existed as fables of old did: on the dying breath of story-telling. No one ever thought of recording it in print. My family is one of the rare ones that still talk about that time, talk about it in its ugly glory. Through them I saw what the question really wanted: the grassroots of the problem. It wanted the events as it happened, the series of cause and effect as it unfolded under the relentless glare of the mediterranean sun. It wanted the chorus of voices, each unique yet the same in their own ways to merge with the elements of a small island on that day on June 1974, and sing their deafening cicada song to a world who would rather forget them. 

Men and women now in their eighties had faced the ugly, mindless wrath of war. Some had seen things that had pushed them to murder, madness and suicide. Others did things for country and religion that they carry around with them today like a guilty sin. People went missing, whole villages were razed to the ground. There were the tortured with some still alive to tell the tale. There was an artillery bullet through the hipbone of a five-year old girl, four years in hospital clamped together by metal because of metal and a lifetime (a half-life) confined to wheel-chairs.

Yet after three decades people are trying to build a future for themselves, free from the horror and shame of their near-past. But the skyscrapers and the luxury villas, the five-star hotels and expensive shopping malls are not bringing any comfort. Money is a temporary panacea. It does not fill the strange void, the gaping alienation of a nation. The bones of the dead, the eternally silenced, push at the foundations of these new-fangled buildings. At night, the dreams of the new, forgetful generation are troubled from the tremors of their ancestors shuddering in unmarked graves. It is like the hum of a coming earthquake, a deep guttural unearthly hum. It’s a rule: no one can build a future by burying the past. The truth will out. And it is the charge of a writer to tell the truth, the way it needs to be told.

All the above, in all its straight and flowery language fell upon my mind in a matter of minutes, yet took months to spool out into its full-length. Thought moves fast, and one thought follows another at lightning speed until you have a many-headed hydra; reason upon reason to tell a story, to strengthen the validity of it in the world.

As I said, this idea for a novel happened years ago, and I still wrestle with it. I write almost daily, but there is so much to write. It began with a people and a particular moment in their quiet yet complex history, but has extended to the rocks and the seas and the wind. I used to listen to people recounting the history of their personal lives during that time, but now I find everything in the hum of the earth, and all the silent souls it bears inside it.

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Magpie Tales #37 | ‘The Man and the Mirror’

24 Sunday Oct 2010

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Writing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

magpie tales, short story, the man and the mirror


“There we are. Feeling better?”
“…….”
“All done.” She stared down at him, at the parchment skin and skewed rictus grin that was more a mockery than a rehearsal of rigor mortis. He was the closest imitation to death one could ever get without actually dying; except for those marble blue eyes that rolled in their sockets.    
“…….”
“Now, I’m going to move you to the left. Give these a chance to heal.” Crisp white sheets rustled against his body. He was so light, he has become like sawdust.
“…….”
“They’re looking better.” Her voice smiled.
“…….”
“Right.” The metallic clang of a kidney-shaped bedpan hit the septic water. In his mind the sound made a pretty splash, complete with a crown of perfect little droplets.
“I’ll get rid of these.”
“…….”
“Be back in a bit.” Footsteps, a half shuffle, then the muffled scrape of the bucket on the faded linoleum. Then, the static of silence; the most powerful form of nothingness.

There was a pause as the room adjusted itself to this absence. The man also became still (if that was possible). He fancied his heart slowing down, his breathing became shallower, lighter. Then after a while, after he deemed it safe, the blue orbits came alive, oscillating with great effort from left to right, up and down. Every three days they came to wash him. Each time they’d move him into a different position, sometimes right, sometimes left. Right meant a view out the window and beyond. It meant moving scenery. The left meant a blank wall with nothing but a mirror and a star-shaped medal that hung from a hook. Left meant watching the world back to front, left meant a reminder of the war. Today the surface of the mirror glowed smooth and hard as it reflected the cold clinical light. Clouds, mounds of clouds passed by on its pock-marked surface. Cirrus, Nimbus, Cumulus. The silver film on the back had deteriorated over time marring what would otherwise have been a perfect reflection. They weren’t that different to the age-spots on his hands and face.

“Eyes are the windows to the soul; but the face is the mirror of the heart,” his mother would say. To an extent it was true, for his eyes were now cold and hungry just like his soul. Yet his face dry and puckered like his heart reflected a deceptive nothingness. From this he knew that mirrors lied, for his face showed nothing of his dark secret. This elderly man, stricken with paralysis, had made a Medusa of his life. And that gorgon of sin had followed him back from the jungle, from that smoking village of vengeful ghosts. The war was over, victory had been theirs; a vain and empty win. They celebrated under the banner of the great Golden Eagle, yet it was under that very totem of American pride that lurked a more ancient, more grotesque avatar. At first they called it ‘battle stress’. On his way home across the wide ocean, scenes of that sinful day slipped into his dreams. The glint of a machete threatened his throat, a maze of bamboo groves would separate him from his comrades, and dark, slanted Vietnamese eyes stalked him like tigers. Then there was the dog; a big, black terrible dog. A hell-hound with blazing eyes, and in its jaws the mangled body of a baby girl. The nightmare that rode him all the way back to his hometown.   

His eyes  alone roamed, along with his mind, into the labyrinth of memories. And the key to one hung there on the wall on a blood-red ribbon with his name on it. Hung on the cord of god knew what poor lives he had taken.

The army had taught him, the army had told him to obey. In the army you did not think, it was forbidden. You obeyed like a dog. You had dog-tags. They stamped your name on them and from then on you were property of the state. Like a dog you wore them round your neck. Name, number, date of birth. You were an object whose sole purpose was to mirror the will of others. Kill, destroy, decimate. In the event of death, you were just a statistic. And that’s what happened when the order came to clear the village. ‘Clear’ meant ‘clean’. ‘Clean’ meant ‘kill’. Like marionettes they marched, chewing tobacco like it was gum and breathing napalm fumes like it was perfume. They cut their path through thick bamboo groves towards the target. Like blood-hounds unleashed, the twelve-mile trek through dust and mud made them hungry, savage, full of adrenaline. Every sound heightened their nerves, fear pulsed in their ears.

The calm before the storm, the wait behind the bushes; it was the moment between intention and action. A woman came out of a hut, an infant on her hip. A pail of water stood near the well. From somewhere there came smoke. A baby whimpered, voices soothed it, an elderly man coughed and swore. Moments before the storm, moments of calm, until…

… A deafening staccato report lifted the woman off her feet, making her a mascot of their terror, and her blood a martial graffiti on the wall of the hut. A territorial signature. The flurry, the unbridled rage, the horror that ensued was dredged up from some bottomless pit he had never known before. Blind to their own rage they killed and killed, but for what, he knew not. Even after all these years, he still didn’t understand that monster within him. Flashes of combat; dark, lean men with machetes, knives and clubs came at them but fell before they had a chance to use their crude weapons. It was a danse macabre; the act of man killing man being a different form of cannibalism. To revel in another’s cruel demise, to make their misery your happiness was to imbibe on misfortune. And they feasted, for that is what they were told to do. These were the rules of war, the promised spoils of Mars. In those few minutes of sweltering madness, he had lost his humanity forever.

And just as quickly as it had begun, it had ended. Exhausted after the frenzy, he had stayed to survey the chaos. Bodies littered the floor indecently. Arms and legs in unnatural positions. Bits of flesh, bone and brain flecked the ground. The pools of blood had begun to congeal and attract columns of red ants with their sick-sweet smell. They traipsed through ear holes and gaping mouths and out through nostrils in ordered regiments. Just like soldiers. In minutes the ground was covered with them, a shimmering carpet of chestnut red. On their backs they carried bits of offal; to his disgust he saw what he fancied was a bloody eyeball, followed in surreal sequence by its’ twin; as if they couldn’t bear to be apart. 

Thoroughly sickened, he turned back to the jungle when he heard a deep, unearthly growl. Behind him stood a great black dog shivering with rage. Its’ flanks were ripped to shreds, he saw a madness in its eyes and the tell-tale froth of dementia about its’ muzzle. The animal snapped and bared its teeth, the whites of its eyes rolled, stalking him. Now it was the predator, and he the prey. In the eyes of this mad mongrel he saw his own brief insanity reflected like a terrible mirror. The rabid dog he had been, the blood-hound. The dog froze, then launched itself at him. A single bullet caught it in mid-air blasting its jaw clean off, but not before it let out a desperate, heart-breaking yelp. Near the stiff body of the animal lay the pail of water that had once belonged to the woman with the baby. In it he caught his own reflection. His face was caked with dust, his mouth spattered with blood. Just like the dogs.

But that dog didn’t die, it followed him. It stalked him on the boat home, it turned up in his dreams. It was present when he married his school sweetheart; it was there when he received his medal of honour. He saw it in mirrors, glass windows, reflections, always behind him, always waiting. It lurked in alleyways, in the shadows across the street. He would see it briefly in the rear-view mirror as he backed out the driveway. Always waiting, always grinning with that little corpse in its’ terrible maw.

Battle stress. His had come on slowly, and he had tried to hide it by practising bland expressions in the mirror. No one could know his shame. He hid his dark secret behind a mask, but one day that mask cracked and his secret seeped out in the form of madness. The nightmares grew more vivid, he screamed and cursed in his sleep. Then one morning his wife caught him talking to his reflection. Obscene things issued from his mouth, things learned in the army. Another time neighbours witnessed him hammering the shed door shut, threatening to ‘set the goddamn thing on fire and watch it burn to hell.’ Then there was the incident with his daughter that finally tipped the scales. One night he heard a scraping noise from her room, and when he went to look found the dog on the bed with her torn to pieces. It was then they took him away.

At the asylum they tried everything; cocktails of drugs, counselling, group therapy. But when that didn’t work there came the ‘shock shop’, and eventually, lobotomy. It was not the war, not the horror, nor his night terrors that petrified him; but the asylum. There they took away all his mirrors, all his defences. He could no longer look at the reflection of life. They had taken him to the gorgon itself – and she had turned him to stone.

“Alright I’m back. You have a pretty little rainbow of pills today.”
“…….”
“Let’s turn you the right way round shall we?” Strong, slim hands pulled him back on his back. His skin was cold to the touch.
“Let’s cover you up. You’re freezing.”
“……”
“Now, let’s start with the blue one.”
“…….”
“Swallow now.”
“…….”
“Now, it’s no time to be playing games, you must take these.” The nurse peered down into his face with a mixture of pity and concern.
“What’s the matter?” She passed her hand over his face. Nothing moved. His eyes stared through her.

The nurse felt his arms and hands; they were stone cold. She reached into her pocket and drew out a small mirror. She held it to his mouth. Nothing. She put down her tray of pills and slowly drew the white sheet over his face.

As she turned to leave for the doctor she thought she saw what looked like a dark shadow slink out the door. It looked like a dog.  

——————————-

NOTES: If you are wondering what ‘Magpie Tales’ is, then I suggest you wander off to visit the website. Every few weeks an image is posted, where people can write a story or poem around it. This weeks image is of a mirror. It’s my first time participating in the ‘Magpie Tales’ after finding out about it from Mark over at ‘Absorbed In Words’. He did a fabulous short story entitled ‘Stella’ that inspired me to write one of my own. He’s a great writer, so I highly recommend you go and check it out.

The following story took me two days to draft and write. It wasn’t going to be so long, but one thing led to another and I came up with this. I hope you enjoy it as I had a lot of fun writing it.

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Short Story |Free Online ‘The Love Theme of Sybil and William’ by Chuck Palahniuk

22 Thursday Jul 2010

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Authors, short story

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chuck palahnuik, short story


While browsing today I came across a post over at Chuck Palahniuk’s official website ‘The Cult’ about a short story of his that he has posted up.

It’s part of a collaborative collection called ‘Modern Short Stories’ (a literary journal now defunct) that was published before ‘Fight Club’. It’s very short, in fact it was so short it just about set the scene for something bigger and left me hanging. I’d like to know what other people think of this.

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